Meinong's jungle

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Meinong's jungle is the name given by

non-existent objects in the ontology of Alexius Meinong.[1]

Overview

Meinong, an

William C. Kneale, whose Probability and Induction (1949) includes the passage "after wandering in Meinong's jungle of subsistence ... philosophers are now agreed that propositions cannot be regarded as ultimate entities".[2]

The Meinongian theory of objects (Gegenstandstheorie) was influential in the debate over

P. M. S. Hacker, enables him to "thin out the luxuriant Meinongian jungle of entities (such as the round square), which, it had appeared, must in some sense subsist in order to be talked about".[3]
According to the theory of descriptions, speakers are not committed to asserting the existence of referents for the names they use.

Meinong's jungle is cited as an objection to Meinong's semantics, as the latter commits one to ontically undesirable objects;

abstract objects do not) find Meinong's jungle particularly unpalatable.[4] As Colin McGinn puts it, "[g]oing naively by the linguistic appearances leads not only to logical impasse but also to metaphysical extravagance—as with Meinong's jungle, infested with shadowy Being."[5] An uneasiness with the ontological commitments of Meinong's theory is commonly expressed in the bon mot "we should cut back Meinong's jungle with Occam's razor".[6][7]

Meinong's jungle was defended by

possible world semantics offered a more palatable variation of Meinong's Gegenstandstheorie, as Jaakko Hintikka
explains:

If you ask "Where are the non-existent objects?" the answer is, "Each in its own possible world." The only trouble with that notorious thicket, Meinong's jungle, is that it has not been zoned, plotted and divided into manageable lots, better known as possible worlds.

— Hintikka, Jaakko, The Logic of Epistemology and the Epistemology of Logic, p. 40.[8]

However, modal realists retain the problem of explaining reference to impossible objects such as square circles. For Meinong, such objects simply have a 'being so' that precludes their having ordinary 'being'. But this entails that 'being so' in Meinong's sense is not equivalent to existing in a possible world.

See also

References

  1. ^
    S2CID 121956019
    .
  2. ^
    OCLC 907671
    .
  3. ISBN 0-19-824783-4
    .
  4. ISBN 1-4020-0216-5
    .
  5. ISBN 0-631-18803-7
    .
  6. ISBN 0-674-00841-3
    . Gilbert Ryle once referred to Meinong as 'the supreme entity-multiplier in the history of philosophy', and Keith Donnellan alludes to 'the Meinongian population explosion', both thereby expressing a common view that lies behind the bon mot that we should cut back Meinong's jungle with Occam's razor.
  7. W. V. O. Quine, "On What There Is
    ", The Review of Metaphysics 2 (5), 1948.
  8. ISBN 0-7923-0040-8
    .

Sources

External links
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